Chapter One: The Origin of the Species

Cynthia Cameron had everything she was supposed to want. She had youth, she had beauty, she had money, and she had a really, really hot boyfriend. There was nothing she should have longed for/

But there was.

A baby.

Cynthia wasn't terribly maternal. She actually had no motherly tendencies at all; what she wanted was more of a dress-up doll whom she could put makeup on and stuff into dresses and set in a corner when she lost interest in it. She wanted a very specific kind of child.

A pageant girl.

And that, she was determined, was what she would get.

Now, Cynthia wasn't terribly intelligent, but she had graduated from high school (barely.) So she knew that an attractive mother plus an attractive father meant an attractive baby. Her current boyfriend was the most attractive man she had ever met, and she had been told time and time again that she was a very attractive woman. However, since she was young and rich and very attractive and not terribly intelligent, the kid of guys she dated were about as interested in children as they were in Emily Dickinson. So the answer to the question that she asked her really, really hot boyfriend was a resounding "Not really, babe. What club do you wanna go to tonight?"

So she begged and pleaded and whined and wheedled. "Please, honey? Please? I'll take care of her all by myself. You won't have to do a thing!"

She sounded, in fact, like a child begging for a puppy. Disgusting.

But since the boyfriend figured this cold only mean more you-know-what for him, and since he really wanted to get back to the subject of clubbing, he said yes. Sure. He would gladly get his very attractive girlfriend pregnant.

And what happens, you know, happens.

And what happened next was a perfectly beautiful and (against all odds) fairly intelligent baby girl.

It wasn't long before her mother had her all trained up and entered in a pageant. At the age of eighteen months, Arwen Venus Cameron won the title of Baby Miss Beverley Hills.

Of course, it didn't stop there. From then on in, every couple of months, poor Winnie was spray-tanned, slathered with makeup, squeezed into a dress/bikini/tutu/cheerleading uniform, and absolutely drowned in hair spray. She knew what silicon chicken cutlets were before she knew what chicken chicken cutlets were. She knew how to seem innocent, yet caring in front of the judges. She could walk five different ways before she was three years old.

Her mother had been successful.

And so it was that Arwen Venus Cameron grew up like a Barbie, among hairstylists and makeup artists, among personal trainers and dieticians. She was so bright that she started homeschool from the age of three and a half, but she was never allowed to answer a question with her own opinion. She fell in love with a soccer ball the first time she saw one, but her mom didn't want to have anything to do with it unless judges were impressed by juggling.

"This is fun," said her mother, every time she entered a pageant.

This is fun, thought Winnie.

That's how she started.